


The rose and the star

by elaiel



Series: The rose and the star [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Magical Inheritance, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:49:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23840329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elaiel/pseuds/elaiel
Summary: Hermione Granger is absolutely certain that the homeless man she keeps seeing in town is familiar. Or at least looks like someone she knows.The Winter Soldier is doing his level best to escape Hydra, trying to work out who the hell he is and why the weird woman who drinks in the tea shop keeps buying him food.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Hermione Granger
Series: The rose and the star [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1990105
Comments: 56
Kudos: 403
Collections: Every Fandom Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2020 Every Fandom Bang. Art by the awesome Daze Ventura.  
> Huge thanks to Daze Ventura who created the lovely art at the beginning of both chapters - I doubt I was the easiest writer to work with! I never did quite get to the smut I had originally envisaged! Maybe I'll write a follow up to fit it in.  
>  **HP fandom** : "Epilogue? What Epilogue?" adjacent. Mostly post _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_ canon-compliant except Ron married Lavender. No Ron bashing but he's not with Hermione at this point.  
>  **MCU fandom** : Canon up to the end of _Captain America - The Winter Soldier_ , but Bucky ends up in the UK during his wanderings after CA-TWS.

The man had been outside the tea shop on and off for a week before Hermione really noticed him. She felt rather guilty that it had taken so long for her to actually notice him, but the homeless population of her town was small but persistent. You tended to see the same faces, drinking the same cheap lager or cider, day after day.

This man was different. For starters, you never saw him drinking alcohol. Occasionally she saw him with a paper cup of coffee or a bottle of soft drink, but never alcohol. He always wore the same clothes, a bomber jacket over a hoodie with the hood pulled forward to shelter his face, jeans, tatty black boots and black leather gloves. Sometimes he wore a baseball cap. If it rained he often sheltered under an old plasticized canvas sign advertising the closing down sale of some shoe shop long since closed down and he had a surprisingly small rucksack full of possessions.

He wasn’t exactly begging. No-one really begged or they were moved on by the police. Like many of the others he sat there and waited for passers by to eventually give him money or food, although unlike many of the others he didn’t have a sign on a bit of cardboard. He always mumbled a thank-you and never made eye contact. She had given him food and drink herself, unwilling to give him cash in case he spent it on drugs, but all she had received was his standard mumbled “thanks” and a quick nod without eye contact.

Hermione watched from the window seat of the tea shop one morning as he arrived to find another one of the homeless population in his spot. He stopped, paused and the other man, ragged and battered and clutching a plastic bag of cans of cheap lager looked up. She watched the other man do a double take, then take to his heels. Bomber jacket guy just calmly sat down on the folded cardboard boxes the other man had left, crossed his legs and leaned back against the wall of the alcove.

Hermione frowned, but looked away as soon as the man was settled, not wanting to get caught looking at him. She went back to the manuscript in front of her, absently sipping her cup of tea as she scribbled notes in the margin. She really needed to rework the final section on banking, but she did not have access to the information she needed. The best way would be to speak to the goblins at Gringotts, but she was fairly certain that would be an expensive proposition and was not sure that she would receive a very warm welcome. Perhaps Neville would be able to help. Now he had reached his majority and taken over his inheritance, he must have had some training in magical financial matters.

The sound of rain pattering against the window distracted her from the text and she looked up again to see that bomber jacket guy had pulled out his canvas sign and was sheltered under it. As he resettled the canvas, she caught a glimpse of his face before he reached up and pulled his hoodie back forward. He was surprisingly healthy looking, if quite thin, and the ends of his apparently long hair curled forward around his jaw. As if he realised she was looking at him, he glanced up at her and for a moment she met his brilliantly blue eyes before he frowned and looked back down.

Those eyes, the way he looked up through his eyelashes and shaggy hair, was like looking at Sirius. That sense of barely controlled...something. Not quite danger, but trouble, leashed poorly. Hermione sighed at the memory of the man she had barely got to know. She realised she was staring at the man without really looking, and he was looking at her, a half frown on his face. She shot him an apologetic look and went back to her manuscript.

xxxoooxxx

The soldier sat under his makeshift shelter. This country wasn’t his country, or not one of the countries he seemed to be most familiar with living in. However, he was fully fluent in the language and the culture seemed familiar enough that he could get by.

He was currently homeless. This was not a particular problem, he was healthy and strong enough, beyond what appeared to be the norm. Consequently many of the usual problems for homeless people, particularly hypothermia and violence, were not problems for him. While he was homeless he was practically invisible and as long as he didn’t come to the attention of law enforcement he was a non-person. Still a non-person.

What he needed, and what this situation gave him, was time. Time to work through the memories that were slowly coming back to him. Time to let more memories float back through the mixture of violence, pain and servitude which were all he was able to remember of the last… The thought made him pause. If the museum exhibition was correct, then it had been several decades. He certainly didn’t have several decades of memories though. At least not yet.

The woman was back in the tea shop. The soldier knew she had noticed him, he’d seen her looking at him a few times. Sometimes she looked at him directly, if she thought he wasn’t looking, sometimes she was sneaking a glance out of the corner of her eye, her face hidden by her tumbling curls. Today he’d caught her staring at him, but realised after a moment that she wasn’t actually staring at him, just staring out of the window lost in a thought or a memory. He idly wondered for a moment what her memory was.

He didn’t think she was a threat. She didn’t carry any weapons, didn’t even appear to carry a cellphone, just a large satchel. She came into the tea shop every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, sat at the table in the window and worked on her papers. While she was there, she drank tea. Sometimes she ordered breakfast, usually she ordered lunch. One day she had given him hot tea and a piece of cake.

She was a low risk person. Still, her continued interest bothered him and the soldier had resolved that he should follow her one day and gain more information. The woman sat in the window and frowned at a page of her papers. The soldier decided that he would not follow the woman today.

xxxoooxxx

The man was outside the tea shop again the next time Hermione stopped in. Sitting in the window again with her cup of tea and toast, she wondered whether she should talk to him. She quickly decided against it, as a bad idea if only because he would have had no idea she was even there. Putting her musings aside, she pulled out her manuscript and got back to work. Ron had kindly agreed to draft a section on Wizarding sports and games, which he’d completed very quickly. As she had expected though, it contained a lot of accurate information but needed a lot of work to make it fit for publication. Lavender had agreed to draft some information on wizarding clothes and fashions, but that would need to wait for a few days until she and Ron were back from holiday. Hermione picked up her pencil and started annotating Ron’s manuscript.

It must have been about two hours later when she realised that the man in the bomber jacket wasn’t alone anymore. It had started to rain without her noticing, the sort of light persistent rain that gets you wet before you realise it’s even raining that much. The man had been joined under his makeshift shelter by a boy, barely in his late teens, in torn tracksuit bottoms and a donkey jacket several sizes too large. As usual, the man didn’t have a sign or a cup for pennies, but the boy had a piece of card noting the price of a room at the night shelter and a tatty paper cup. She watched them briefly for a moment as they sat there, seemingly content to sit in silence, then went back to work.

It was the sudden motion that got her attention. A man, much more warmly dressed than the boy, in a blue puffa jacket and jeans was standing in front of the pair shouting at the boy and waving his hands at him. From the limited sound that came through the glass, Hermione gathered the man thought the boy owed him money. The boy was muttering something and shrinking back. Hermione didn’t catch the last thing the man said, but his body language had threatened violence.

The man in the bomber-jacket exploded upwards, almost too fast to see, and Hermione flinched. His face was a mask of fury, almost Bellatrix levels of uncontrolled anger and in that moment, Hermione could almost see her in the man’s features. Before she could straighten her thoughts, bomber-jacket-man had grabbed the man in the puffa jacket by the throat and was speaking harshly at him, his face a mask of cold rage. He finished his obvious threat, not more than maybe two or three sentences and dropped the man who fell backwards and back-pedalled, crabwise before scrambling to his feet and shouting at bomber-jacket-man again. Bomber-jacket-man simply stood there, implacable, then for a moment, he just smiled and Bellatrix Lestrange’s madness hung in the air for a split second.

The man in the puffa jacket spat some final imprecation at bomber-jacket-man and the boy, but it was obviously all bluster. As he turned to leave, practically at a run, Hermione could see the outright fear on the man’s face.

Bomber-jacket-man’s face softened into calmness and he gave a visible sigh, before sitting down calmly with the boy and talking to him quietly. All the madness and threat of violence was gone as if it had never been there at all. The only show of steel in him now appeared to be the serious talking to he was quietly giving the boy. As if he had sensed her attention he looked up and met her eyes. She gave him an embarrassed half-smile and in return got a rather apologetic look which surprised her.

She looked away, unsure how sane he was, having seen this interaction. Still, for the remainder of the afternoon, he was his usual quiet, unassuming self. Feeling quite guilty, it was only one incident and he had been protecting the boy, she dropped a paper bag of sandwiches and cake in front of the pair and left quickly without making eye-contact.

xxxoooxxx

The soldier waited a couple of days before he followed her, picking a Friday, the town was always busy on a Friday lunchtime and crowds were cover. She followed her usual routine, getting tea and a snack, and sitting in the window to work on her papers. The soldier moved away, before she had decided to get up and leave, and found a sheltered spot to keep watch.

The woman kept her usual routine, packing up her things in the mid-afternoon and leaving the coffee shop. She seemed to look for him as she left, but did not pause and walked off up the street.

The soldier slipped out and followed her, dropping into well learned patterns of behaviour to tail the target unseen. She followed a slightly winding path through the town, stopping off at a butcher’s shop to pick up some meat, before walking into an alleyway. The soldier frowned. He knew this alley, and it was firstly a dead end and secondly a regular spot for drug dealing. He quickened his steps, hearing a cracking sound from the alley.

“What the hell?”

The alley was completely empty. 

xxxoooxxx

As if he was aware of her thoughts, bomber-jacket-man seemed to go out of his way to acknowledge her politely the next few times she went to the tea-shop. Once or twice she even got something that was almost a smile and once a wry grin when she dropped a cake in his lap. He didn’t try to talk to her or stare at her though, nothing creepy, just a polite acknowledgement of her presence.

It was still strange how much he reminded her of the Blacks though. Not one of them specifically, but many of them in little ways. The wry grin he had given her had reminded her of Tonks and the look on his face when he was giving the boy a serious dressing down had reminded Hermione of Tonks’ mother Andromeda. There was nothing for it, but some research.

Maybe he was related to the Blacks somehow. She hadn’t looked into magical genealogy much, but there were almost certainly spells out there for that kind of thing. The pureblood families were obsessed with it and the Blacks, if nothing else, had their family tree tapestry. Maybe the man was related to one of the burned out family members. Given his age he could even be Sirius’ son. Hermione was fairly sure Sirius had lived quite a wild life when he was young. That seemed unlikely though, considering how much Sirius cared for Harry, his godson. Had Sirius had a child, deliberately or accidentally, Hermione was certain that he would have been very involved with them or made arrangements with Dumbledore at the least.

The more sickening thought was that he was the son of one of the Blacks who were Deatheaters. Rape and murder had been listed in the crimes charged against several of the Deatheaters. It was possible that a woman survived to have a child. Hermione shuddered. The thought almost did not bear thinking about, but her pragmatism forced her to add it to her mental list of possibilities.

Research. She resolved to ask Harry for access to the Black library. It wasn’t entirely honest, but it was the library most likely to have the genealogical materials she needed. And maybe a more complete copy of the Black family tree.

xxxoooxxx

The soldier waited for the following Monday and repeated his tail of the woman. This time she did not stop at any shops and took a slightly different route to the same alley. The same cracking noise came from the alley and again, by the time he reached the alley, she was gone.

He searched the alley carefully, even checking inside the industrial bins, but was unable to find a way out of it except the back doors into the shops. It was a simple service alley running down between two shops, then opening out into a T-shape and running a short way along behind them. Its only permanent tenants were the industrial bins for waste and recyclables behind each of the small shops. The rear wall of it was the solid back wall of a church.

On the Wednesday, he did not follow her into the alley, but waited outside to see if she left through one of the shops. Though he waited for several hours, till well after it was dark, she did not appear.

On the Friday he found a spot to wait near the alley and after she had entered, he waited all night, but still she did not appear. The soldier was bothered.

xxxoooxxx

Harry had been happy to let her use the library at Grimmauld Place. The house was only occasionally used these days, although a couple of house elves lived there to keep the place in good order. Harry had seen no reason to remove the wards on the house left by the Order of the Phoenix and it remained unplottable and hidden. Except the remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix, everyone who had known or discovered its existence had died in the war. Now it was a place of last resort when fame or the general chaos surrounding his own and Ginny’s quidditch related fame got too ridiculous. Hermione knew that he had also loaned its use to a few other close friends as well as herself.

Luckily Kreacher was long gone, dying of old age several years earlier. Harry had refused Kreacher’s wish to have his head mounted on the wall in the hallway, but had compromised with a wizarding photo with a plaque underneath which said ‘Kreacher, faithful to the House of Black’, and having Kreacher buried in the Black family crypt. He had even been there at Kreacher’s death, holding the sad little creature’s hand and assuring him of his place in death alongside the family members he had served. Hermione thought Harry had gone above and beyond, but it was true that Kreacher had served the family loyally his entire life.

Harry was happy to have someone drop in for a few days to look in on the house elves Tansy and Rilly though, who tended to get a little anxious if the house went completely untenanted for any length of time. Hermione agreed that she’d spend a few days there, let herself be pampered by the house elves while she worked her way through the library. She could catalogue the books as she went. Harry jumped at the chance, suggesting she get the elves to help.

The house had been fully redecorated, probably by Tansy and Rilly, as Hermione knew that Harry still avoided the place a lot of the time. They had kept the decor largely the same, but had repainted and papered the woodwork and walls in lighter colours and the house looked almost completely different. The painting of Mrs Black had been removed from the hallway. Harry had had to hire a cursebreaker from Gringotts, although not Bill Weasley, to get her down and she had been relocated to the “green parlour”, a room which was almost entirely unused.

The library had benefited well from the complete redecoration. The curtains had been replaced with heavy beige linen drapes over sheer net curtains and the room was full of light and the morning sun. Tansy, the little elf dressed in a tiny version of a formal housekeeper’s dress and hat, trotted ahead of her to the glass fronted bookshelves.

“You be certain?” She asked Hermione. “Is big job!”

Hermione squinted at the eight, floor to ceiling, bookshelves. “Well,” she said. “It needs doing.”

“It does!” Tansy nodded emphatically. “But still, big job.”

With a gesture, Tansy opened the first bookshelf. Hermione could have kicked herself for being at all surprised when the bookcase magically folded out from it’s space on the wall. The shelves slid silently out into two zig zags of three bookcases, double sided, which filled most of the free space in the centre of the room. What had looked like a single bookcase was actually twelve. Only the outer bookcase on the right hand side was actually visible when the glass door was closed.

Hermione pulled out a stack of paper and a dictaquil and put them on a table. Tansy pushed up her little sleeves and pulled a feather duster and polishing cloth from thin air.

“We get to work!” Tansy said, giving Hermione a serious and enthusiastic nod.

Hermione couldn’t help but grin back at her.

xxxoooxxx

The soldier had planned to get ahead of the woman and secrete himself in the alleyway before she arrived on the Monday, however the woman with the curly hair didn’t appear at the tea shop on Monday or any days that week. When it went into a second week he found himself worrying a little when she had not appeared by Wednesday, although she clearly could just be on holiday or had some other commitments.

He found himself looking out for her specifically on Thursday even though she rarely appeared on a Thursday. On Friday he chose not to go and sit by the tea shop. He was getting too predictable anyway, needed to change his routine for a while before anyone actually noticed him.

xxxoooxxx

Tansy had reported back to Harry and consequently Harry, Ginny, James, Albus and Lily had all descended on her for for breakfast on the Wednesday so Harry could tell Hermione that, if she was going to catalogue the whole library correctly, then he was going to pay her the going rate.

Hermione’s protests over breakfast that she was only on a years sabbatical and perfectly well off on her author’s income and her investments, furthermore that she was getting free research access _and_ room and board went unheard. Harry was having none of it and Ginny and the children backed him up emphatically. He simply sent off a quick letter to his account manager at Gringotts instructing them to transfer the appropriate sum into her account. Hermione gave up and caught up on all the latest gossip.

By the following Tuesday she and Tansy had cleaned all of the books and bookcases and created a single list of every book on the ninety-six bookcases. Two thousand, six hundred and eighty-eight books. Hermione thanked her lucky stars that Teddy had bought her a high quality dictaquil for Christmas a couple of years before. She would never have managed to log all of the books by hand in such a short time. As well as the books, they had also discovered a large selection of other items, including four wands; a selection of wizarding pictures and photographs, some in albums and some loose; various random ornaments; assorted old correspondence; and most weirdly, a dried pressed frog which was being used as a bookmark.

She agreed with Harry to drop into Ollivanders sometime and have the wands identified and she also wanted to purchase a proper photograph album from Flourish and Blotts so that Teddy could mount all of the loose photographs neatly. The books, obviously, would all form part of the catalogue.

The most important book that she had found was a previous, and very out of date, library catalogue. It was a catalogue in the loosest sense of the term, more a long list of all of the books entered as they were added to the library in order of acquisition. However it did list all of the books up to mid 1858 including where they had been bought or acquired from. Hermione took an additional trip out to Flourish and Blotts to buy bookplates and more ink, then additionally to WHSmiths to buy index cards, a box and pencils and erasers. Then she set Tansy to work comparing the current list and the 1858 list and creating an index of all of the books by author and topic and noting any missing. Tansy was thrilled.

Freed up to do some research, Hermione pulled out any books she had noted which seemed to include genealogy or genealogical magic (fourteen), any books on the history of the Black Family (two hand-written family texts) and the photos and portraits. If she did nothing else, identifying all of Teddy’s family on the Black side would be helpful for him in the future.

xxxoooxxx

Unable to fathom why the woman should have been on his mind so much, the soldier relocated to another town a few miles away for a couple of weeks. It had been unwise to stay in the same place for any significant length of time anyway.

On the surface, the town had seemed very similar to the previous town he had been living in, but it wasn’t as straightforward as his precious location. There was a considerably higher level of drug abuse in this place and he found himself having to resort to violence far too many times. When he finally had to break a man’s arm rather than be shot, he gave up. He spent some time considering whether to leave this country altogether, but finally he just relocated back to his prior location. He’d been gone long enough to throw off most passive searches, he told himself.

She was still not in the tea shop. This was...problematic. He contemplated tracking her down, but he did not have enough intell on the woman to locate her, and it was unlikely that anyone would be likely to share any information with the homeless man who sat outside the coffee shop. He forced his mind into a different train of thought, trying to convince the boy named Baz that he would be better off going to social services than living on the streets. It was a difficult argument to make considering his current situation, but despite his size the boy was only 13 and was being actively preyed on by others. It was a more solvable problem than the missing woman though.

xxxoooxxx

The portrait had caught her attention as soon as she saw it. It was not one spelled to move, but was a small portrait, not quite a miniature and part of a set painted on wood; the sort of small painting done as a personal memento or keepsake.

When she had pulled it out of it’s scuffed leather case, it had appeared to be a small flat wooden box. However, when she ran her fingers over the Black Family crest, the top opened and it folded out like a book to show a portrait on each of the two panels. These then folded out again to show four inner panels, each with a further portrait. The portraits quite clearly predated the family tapestry, but reference to the Black library with significant help from Tansy, provided more information. An earlier, hand drawn, family tree suggested that the outside portraits were of Lord Antares and Lady Antigone Black and the inner portraits were their three children and a further portrait of an older couple together, who Hermione guessed were the parents of Lady Black.

What was most startling, was that the picture with the banner naming it as Regulus (one of the many in the family tree) was the absolute spitting image of the man in the bomber jacket. In the photo. Regulus was maybe his very late teens or early twenties, putting the date of the paintings somewhere in the mid 1850s. Still, the likeness to her homeless man was uncanny. According to the family tree, it appeared that _this_ Regulus had never married or had children and neither had the youngest, Alhena, though his older brother became Lord Black, married and had two children including Teddy’s great-grandfather.

Whoever the homeless man in the bomber jacket was, she thought that it at least appeared that he was a distant cousin of Teddy. If he was a distant cousin of Teddy, he was also a distant cousin of Harry. She chewed on her lip as she stood there looking at the family tree. There were so many people burned out of the tree that there must be dozens of people, families, related to Teddy and Harry either in the magical or muggle worlds. She wondered how simple it would be to trace them.

xxxoooxxx

He had finally managed to convince the boy Baz to speak to one of the people who ran the pop-up soup kitchen. The woman he had gently prodded Baz through a conversation with had been more than happy to put him in touch with a charity that supported homeless LGBT youth, which neatly sidestepped the issue of social services speaking to his parents. The last time that had happened had been shortly before the soldier had met Baz and he had still been bearing the bruises he had received on being returned home to his father.

She had tried to engage the soldier in conversation, but he had ducked out quickly once his job was done. An outreach worker from the charity had turned up a couple of hours later and collected the scrappy youngster, although not before leaving his business card and the contact details of the hostel Baz was going to. The soldier took them, and a little impulsively gave Baz a one armed hug and gentle thump on the back. When he pulled back, he could see Baz had tears in his eyes.

“Take care, punk.” The soldier muttered.

“Call me.” Baz ordered him.

The soldier nodded. “If I can.”

He knew he would not. Maybe he would send a postcard from here before he left for the next place.

xxxoooxxx

The real world had imposed itself on Hermione’s random research interlude. Her publisher was pressuring her for a first draft of her book, or at least some complete chapters and this meant she needed to be at home. Much of the rest of the book was in a readable state, but she had drafted and redrafted the section on wizarding finances, before realising it was terrible. In a fit of pique she hexed it to shreds. This was not something that she was going to be able to do herself. She gave up and went out for a cup of tea.

The man in the bomber jacket was sitting outside the tea-shop again. His face lit up in pleased surprise when he saw her. His smile completely changed him, as if it went right down into his muscles, gentling him somehow. She smiled back as she walked past into the shop.

Inside the shop, Cassie greeted her warmly.

“Been a while since we saw you, love.” She told Hermione. “You want the usual?”

Hermione grinned at her. “Of course.”

“Sit yourself down and I’ll bring it over.”

Hermione took her usual window seat. Outside, the man was watching her. Hermione parsed his expression as concerned, but he quickly ducked his head away in what seemed to be embarrassment.

“He’s still out there.” Cassie said, putting a tray down on the table. “Went for a week or two but back last week. Hasn’t got that young lad with him any more though.”

Hermione frowned. “The one he was looking after?”

“If you’d call it that.” Cassie said. “All those homeless people, all on drugs. Or that extra strong lager.” She added. “Horrible stuff!”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him drink alcohol.” She told Cassie. “Coffee, water, fizzy drinks, but never alcohol.”

Cassie gave her a rather disbelieving look. “I’ll believe that when I see it.” She shrugged. “I suppose you want me to take him out something to eat?”

Hermione gave her a sheepish smile. “If you would.”

Cassie huffed out a laugh. “You’re proper soft hearted, you are.”

She wandered off to the counter though and Hermione watched her make and bag up a cheese toastie, slice of fruit cake and a takeaway cup of coffee, which she took out to the man. As she handed it over, the man looked up past Cassie and met Hermione’s eyes. He nodded in acknowledgement. Hermione returned his nod and the man opened the bag to eat his early lunch. 

xxxoooxxx

The pureblood obsession with heritage did not fail her, and the Black library’s genealogy book provided her with a variety of spells both light and dark which dealt with determining, clarifying or proving lineage and magical heritage. Unfortunately, many of the spells required the caster to be a member of the family in question and provided either a simple confirmation of blood relationship or confirmed the “heir”.

However, a more modern book from the 1960s on the “Most Ancient and Noble Families of the Countries of the British Isles and France” also contained several spells and additionally a parchment which folded out to show the most notable families and their coat of arms. One of the spells was a simple charm which could be cast to see if you were distantly related to any of the families. Apparently the coat of arms would glow a little and move if you had a relation to any of the families on the parchment. A smaller line of text disavowed legal responsibility for the outcome of the charm and noted that its use was not a replacement for the services of your family solicitor or a duly qualified Charms Master.

She had cast the spell herself and was slightly shocked to see the parchment glow. The Dagworth coat of arms shone so brightly she could barely look at it and when she put her hand over that one to hide the glow, there was a much fainter glow from four other coats of arms, Prewitt, Bones, and Peverell but a reasonably strong light shining from the Gaunt coat of arms. She cringed at the last one and closed the parchment.

Hector Dagworth-Granger, she thought. There were copies of three of his books in the library. She stared at the spines of the books. Well, she thought to herself, that had happened. It wasn’t as if people had not noted the name before. She sighed, made a note of the information in her notebook, and resolved to ask Harry for a recommendation of a suitable solicitor. She probably needed to look into her own family tree.

She put that aside though and read back over a couple of the other spells. One, when cast by a registered professional such as a solicitor or Charms Master on a person and a piece of new parchment, would apparently provide you with a family tree, or at least a statement of your parentage, which was sufficient to be stated in a court of law. Cast by anyone else, it would still provide the document, but not valid for a court statement.

It was a very challenging charm to learn, practically ritual magic. She copied it out carefully into her notebook, then proofread it line by line. She thought she could probably learn it to a sufficient standard to get at least a basic document, although she might go through quite a lot of parchment in the process of learning. She packed up her things and found her cloak. Time to go shopping at Flourish and Blotts.

xxxoooxxx

The soldier found himself at a loose end, a feeling unfamiliar to him. His memory seemed to have given up all of the information it would with the current stimuli and with nothing else to do, he was missing the company of the boy Baz and indirectly the woman with curly hair.

He had caved in to his urges and against his better judgement had broken into a house and made a call to the hostel. Baz was doing well, meeting a large number of his peers and had been enrolled into a school to catch up on his education. The soldier suspected that the honeymoon period would not last forever, but the news that Baz’ STI tests had all come back negative meant that at least one thing about this period of the kid’s life wouldn’t come back to haunt him. Little punk deserved a bit of luck.

The soldier decided to spend some time in the public library and catch up on recent historical events. Maybe that would spark the release of some new memories.

xxxoooxxx

The charm took her a week and a lot of parchment to get right. She blanked it all once she had used it, but it needed a completely new parchment each time. She cast it on herself repeatedly, and ended up with an extensive family tree which connected her directly to the Dagworth family via Lysander Granger, a squib brother of Hector Dagworth-Granger, older than Hector by almost thirty years. The Dagworth family was no longer extant apparently, and she was fairly certain that while there probably wasn’t any financial value to claiming the title, she possibly would be able to do so, if only to annoy the purebloods. The Grainger family, her family, had apparently been Muggles for about four generations now.

She was also, through Lysander and Hector’s mother, a distant cousin of Molly Weasley nee Prewitt and therefore Ron and all his siblings; a distant cousin of Harry through a Dagworth marriage to the Potters a further generation back; and a slightly closer but still fairly distant cousin of Susan Bones through the marriage of one of Lysander’s sisters. The strangest thing was the Gaunt connection.

According to the spell, she was also a distant cousin of Tom Riddle. Lysander had married another squib called Alcyone Gaunt, and Lysander and Alcyone were her great great grandparents. She knew from the war that the Gaunt family had been in decline for generations and had pretty much ended up a single line with either no siblings, or family members who had died unmarried, or children who had died in childhood. It was hard to tell for certain, magical family trees did not seem to like noting squibs and it had been hard to push the charm to give that much information. To be totally honest she was not really interested in finding any Gaunt relations of any kind anyway.

This was as far as she could get without someone else to practice on. She gave herself a stern talking to, then dropped in to see Harry at his office.

Harry was more than happy to discover her “accidental” research and overjoyed to find out she was a distant cousin. He also immediately set his own solicitor to work investigating the possibility of Hermione claiming the Dagworth-Granger title or estate. Beyond that he was also happy to volunteer himself as a test subject for the charm, and once Teddy had seen the results, Teddy was also pressing her to do him a family tree.

The teenager was surprisingly interested in her research and was more than happy for her to cast magic on him as long as she taught him the charm. Between them, they were able to create some very detailed family trees she created for both sides of his family, Harry’s family and her family. Interestingly, Harry appeared on both family trees, as a child of James and Lily Potter on the Potter family tree and as a child of Sirius and the current Head of the House of Black on the Black family tree. She supposed it must be that Harry was Sirius’ godchild and the sole beneficiary of Sirius’ magically executed will. Mirroring this, Teddy appeared on the Black family tree, Lupin family tree _and_ Potter Family trees. Hermione made a note for Harry to look into the magical legacies entailed to each family, as the crossovers suggested that there was a level of magical merger happening.

With Teddy’s enthusiastic participation and Hermione’s knowledge of where she probably needed to push the spell, it was not hard to get the spell to provide a wider and very detailed Black family tree which included a whole line of family members from Regulus. No manner of pushing the spell had produced any family tree from Regulus’ sister Alhena and most other dead-ended family tree branches more recently just tied into other magical families that she could already evidence.

Regulus had apparently had a daughter called Taygete Black who had married a man called Kilpatrick and their daughter Stella had married a man called Jonathan Barnes. And that was where the family tree that Hermione could produce ended. According to the family tree, Jonathan and Stella Barnes had no children.

Hermione theorised though that it was possible that he had too little magic left attached to him for the spell to work, or maybe had travelled too far away, or had been concealed magically or possibly even adopted magically into another family. The record didn’t tell her and she did not understand the spell enough to know what would act to conceal parts of the tree. However she was very clear that the family tree that had elucidated her own heritage had not included a significant number of her current family, including some cousins, but not including their siblings. One of her grandmother’s siblings was included but three others completely absent.

She sighed and rolled the parchment. Whoever the man was, there was not a strong enough link between Teddy and he at the moment to link him into the family tree. That was if he even was a Black. There were a million other things that were calling on her time including finishing the final draft of her book. Lavender had sent her a draft to rework and her editor wouldn’t wait forever. Time to get back to normal life.


	2. Chapter 2

Neville had been happy to help her draft the section on wizarding finances. It wasn’t that far away from mundane finances, notwithstanding the goblins and non-decimal currency, just a few very specific areas which Hermione needed to draft content on.

In return, Hermione was giving Neville a solid introduction to the mundane world. Since he had reached his majority and taken over his inheritance, he was keen to diversify his family’s investments and property into the mundane world and in order to do that he needed a solid grasp of mundane business and culture. Partly towards this end, Hermione had taken to taking Neville and Luna out once a month to different kinds of muggle cultural opportunities. Some had proved more successful than others, but watching Luna in the British Museum, Neville at Kew Gardens and both of them at a mundane zoo had made all the effort worthwhile.

Every outing finished with a meal out, but today had been all about the food, traditional Sunday lunch in a decidedly muggle gastropub. Harry, Ginny and baby James had joined them for a while later on, but had left early to put James to bed.

Hermione, Neville and Luna had just left to find a safe place to apparate at the end of the evening. Explaining CCTV had been surprisingly easy, finding somewhere in the town centre which didn’t have it and wasn’t easily overlooked was harder. The best place on this side of town was a narrow lane just off the high street, leading down towards the park. The buildings on either side were all historically listed buildings, despite being fully converted to commercial use. Almost half way down there was an almost right angle bend, which meant that they couldn’t be seen from the high street and if you stepped into one of the doorways, none of the shops’ own CCTV could see you.

Neville and Luna disappeared with a quick wave and the usual crack. Wand in hand, Hermione herself was just preparing to leave when she heard running footsteps pounding towards her. She stepped back into the darkness of the doorway, murmuring to disillusion herself.

The first figure raced past her, feet hammering on the cobbles, and the man’s pursuers were passing her before she realised that firstly it was bomber-jacket-man and secondly that the four men following him were carrying handguns.

From further up the lane, some of the footsteps faltered and there was a _phut phut_ sound that Hermione’s brain parsed as silenced gunshots. Handguns. In England. Whoever was following bomber-jacket-man certainly were not police, the armed response teams carried rifles, she had seen them patrolling regularly enough in Kings Cross and other London train stations. No legitimate authority in Britain carried hand-guns like that, if you had the authority to carry a weapon in public it was large and obvious, armed police carried rifles. She ran down the alley as the footsteps turned to thuds and scuffling with more irregular _phut phut_ noises.

Where the alley opened out in the entrance to the park, bomber-jacket-man was fighting with two of the men. A further lay motionless on the floor and a third was pointing a gun towards the fight, his aim wavering as he tried to get a clear shot at bomber-jacket-man. Hermione ducked into another doorway.

“Expelliarmus!” Hermione murmured and the man’s gun went flying to his obvious surprise.

He stood there looking round, confused and angry and trying to locate whoever had managed to wrench his gun away. Beyond him, a fifth man stepped into the light cast by the streetlamp and started to speak.

“Желание..Семнадцать…”

Bomber-jacket-man literally howled and redoubled his efforts to throw off his two opponents.

“Ржавый...Рассвет…”

The homeless man managed to knock one of his attackers to the ground and, taking the opponent’s gun out of his hand as he fell, he spun and shot the speaking man in the throat. The man dropped with a gurgle as bomber-jacket-man continued in his turn and shot the gunless man and a sixth opponent Hermione had not even noticed before literally throwing his current opponent into a wall left handed.

Now, the only man standing, he took to his heels. He leapt up at the park railings and swung himself up and over left-handed in a surprisingly athletic move, his body fully clearing the top of the two metre railings by a good measure. He landed, crouching to dissipate some of the momentum and was gone into the darkness.

Not wanting to court trouble, with none of the attackers still standing and trusting to her disillusionment, Hermione slipped back down the lane. Whoever they were they were not people she wanted to be near. She paused in the high street to make an anonymous 999 call from a phone box about hearing the sounds of a big fight. Then, trusting that that would ensure medical attention and police attendance for those who needed it, she ducked behind some cars and apparated away with a crack.

xxxoooxxx

The soldier sat in his customary spot in front of the tea shop. It was a good place, the people that came to the tea shop were rarely in a rush, usually in a good mood and more likely to give him food or money. He was fully aware that most of the other homeless people in the town preferred money, but it was clear that his body, whilst significantly stronger and more resilient (metal arm notwithstanding) required significantly more calories each day to support it. He could go for days without eating, but it significantly impaired his functioning, particularly mentally.

Today he was requiring a significantly high amount of food. The fight with the Hydra retrieval team had left him damaged. The subsequent trailing and killing of the remainder of said team had left him even further damaged. He had removed the bullets from his right arm and side, but it would take him a few days of eating significantly more than usual in order to heal himself back to full mission effectiveness.

The whole series of events the previous night had been deeply annoying. He was now considerably better armed, but it had taken him most of the night to deal with the strike team whilst having to dodge local law-enforcement who, as one would expect, had eventually arrived every time guns had been fired or a fight had been reported. After that he had taken the remainder of the night to dispose of the corpses in suitable places and finally to burn out the truck, after stripping it of anything useful or compromising.

Having been tracked down, it was only a matter of time before he had to move. One missing strike team would mean more following them. He had a couple of days at best. He should take today to eat and rest as much as possible, then leave tonight.

The curly-haired woman walked up the street, pausing momentarily when she saw him. He should not have any visible bruising by now, but he hadn’t seen himself in a mirror and was short on calories, so it was possible that the more superficial damage from the fight was still there. He looked away, trying not to stare at her, but she stopped in front of him.

“Hello.”

He looked up. She was actually talking to him.

“Hi.” He muttered, aware his voice was still hoarse from being punched in the throat multiple times.

“Did you want some food?” She asked him.

He was stumped for a moment, before managing to reply. “Uh, yeah, thanks.”

“What would you like?”

The question stopped him in his tracks. “Anything.” He said finally.

She smiled at him. “Okay.” She said, and rather than going into the tea shop kept walking on up the street.

She was gone for almost twenty minutes by the wall-clock he could see through the tea shop window. Finally she returned with a paper carrier bag which bulged out. It smelled heavily of fried food.

“Fish and chips.” She told him, handing him the bag.

“Thanks.” He said.

She gave him a smile and went into the tea shop, walking up to the counter before taking her customary seat in the window and getting out her bundle of papers.

The warmth seeping through the paper reminded him of the food in his hands. He opened the bag, inside were two paper wrapped bundles, one larger than the other. He opened the smaller one to find a meat pie in a foil tin and something that turned out to be a sausage deep fried in batter. Not fish, but he ate them both anyway in a few quick bites. Unwrapping the second he found it did actually contain traditional fish and chips, a large piece of battered and deep fried white fish and a large portion of chunky fries. He made short work of those too, only realising once he was licking the last of the salt off his fingers that she was watching him from the window with a smile on her face.

xxxoooxxx

On Wednesday, he was still there. Although the wounds had healed, he still felt tired and was underweight. He knew he should move on, but despite extensive surveillance and reconnaissance, there was no sign of a further strike team yet. The woman with the curly hair bought him another meal, walking straight up to him presenting him with a bag of food. He smiled when he took it from her.

“Thank you.” He said.

“Oh!” She seemed very surprised. “You’re American.”

He shrugged. “I was there for a while.”

“I’m glad you’re here.” She said, blushing a little. “I bought the food and then realised that you might not even be here today.” She tilted her head to regard him better. “Are you...okay?”

He wasn’t sure why she asked, but nodded. “I’m...fine.” He looked into the bag, finding it contained paper wrapped bundles which smelled of bread and hot cheese. He looked back up at her. “Thanks for the food.”

“You’re welcome.” She replied, somewhat awkwardly.

They stopped there, looking at each other for a moment, before she gave him a quick smile and a nod.

“Goodbye.” She gave him a little wave and walked into the coffee shop.

He pulled out the food and unwrapped it. Two grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. Underneath these were two bananas and a large piece of cake. He set to eating them.

The food was finished and his curly haired friend was deep into her papers when he noticed the man. He was leaning against a wall talking to another man, both smoking cigarettes as if they had just come out of the pub they were leaning on for a smoke.

“Dammit!” The soldier looked away casually.

The weather was cold, with heavy clouds threatening rain, so the man’s oversized heavy coat didn’t look out of place. When he turned to talk to his companion though, it was clear to the soldier that the man was concealing a large firearm underneath it and a second glance identified the man’s tactical boots worn under his jeans.

The soldier stood and walked over to the bin a few metres away to see what the men would do. As he walked back to his folded cardboard, he could see out of the corner of his eye that the men had shifted to watch him.

He crouched for a moment on his cardboard, trying to identify his next move. It was unlikely that the men would try and apprehend him in the middle of the street in this country. Apprehending him would require guns and combat, and this country’s strong stance on gun ownership meant that even taking a gun out in public would likely result in panic and law enforcement presence.

He realised that the curly haired woman was watching him from her seat in the window with a small frown on her face. He gave her a nod and a tight-lipped smile before sitting down again. She did not appear to be reassured by this though, and over the next few minutes kept looking up to check on him.

He stayed seated on his cardboard for another half an hour, accepting the odd coin from a passerby and watching as the men in the pub cycled in and out of the building to watch him. He counted eight of them, all armed to a greater or lesser degree and all dressed in casual clothes that suggested they were manual workers of some kind.

Two of them looked vaguely familiar, as if he had seen them before, but with an additional vague spread of information about their competences. Maybe he had been tasked to work with them before he had been wiped and reprogrammed. It was as good a guess as any. His impressions were of violence and competence, which was not reassuring, but nothing concrete enough to be really useful.

About an hour later, the curly haired woman packed up her things and came out of the tea shop. She stopped in the doorway, before walking over to him.

“Are you okay?” She asked him again, fumbling her bag over her shoulder and stuffing things into her pocket. “Damn!” Her purse, a set of keys and a thin carved stick tumbled onto the pavement.

“I’m fine.” He replied calmly. He picked up the purse, keys and stick. For a moment he thought the stick glittered, but it was just wet and he wiped it on his sleeve before he handed them to her.

She gave him a long look before speaking. “You’re lying to me.”

He paused a moment in surprise. His experience was limited, at least what he could remember, but he was certain that people were not usually this blunt to strangers.

“Nothing is wrong.” He repeated.

“If you’re sure.” She replied, her words clipped and short.

It was clear that she did not believe him, but she nodded and walked away. Up the street, one of the strike team peeled off from the small group and dropped into step behind the curly haired woman. The soldier resisted the urge to swear. He stood, shouldering his bag in a quick swing and walked off down the street in the opposite direction with quick strides. Reaching the next turn off he broke into a run.

He had a limited amount of time to lose the pursuit and circle back around to intercept the woman with the curly hair before the strike team caught up with her. Her disappearing trick would only make them more likely to track her down in the future. They were probably already trying to trace her.

It wasn’t particularly difficult to lose his pursuit. He knew this town considerably better than his pursuers and was several levels of skill beyond them. Ducking into a dead end alley and swinging himself over a razor wire topped gate with his metal hand landed him in a small yard. The area was a service yard for a firm he had not bothered investigating further than the fact it maintained a small yard and semi-derelict warehouse of vans to service whatever equipment it supplied. He dodged through the vans and came out on the main road. Four turns later he was ducking through the sparse crowds and back onto the curly haired woman’s usual route.

He ducked back into a doorway as she walked past him, not noticing him where he was tucked into the shelter of the shop’s entrance. Waiting for her to pass him by a few paces, he stepped clearly out into the flow of people and cut across the flow, blocking the path of several pedestrians and making himself very clear to her pursuers. This street was old and narrow, closed to vehicle traffic during the daytime, and his disruption of the foot traffic made it almost impossible for her pursuers to keep track of her. True to his expectations, the two men on her tail changed course to follow him.

The pursuit converged on him, forcing him to speed up until he spotted the two men turning into the road ahead of him. He was trapped. He swore under his breath, then stepped into a shop doorway. They must have seen him, even if they had not, the operatives behind him would have indicated his location. He took a deep breath, waiting for the inevitable.

Two operatives walked straight past him.

He froze, as their confused gazes scanned over him without any indication they could even see him. A woman walked past him out of the shop, passing millimetres from his arm, but not acknowledging his presence at all. In front of him, the strike team converged, discussing his disappearance in annoyed whispers. The soldier waited, unable to move in case whatever had concealed his presence would suddenly fail.

An hour after the team had gone from his view, he stepped carefully back into the shop. The woman behind the counter dropped the bag of coins in her hand.

“Oh my god!” She said, laughing in embarrassment, “I didn’t see you there!”

“Sorry.” The soldier muttered and walked out.

It was highly likely that the strike team would try and track the woman down in order to locate him. She was now a known associate, and they would be unlikely to believe she was simply giving charity to a homeless man.

He was going to have to change his plans.

xxxoooxxx

Hermione pushed away the pile of chopped carrots and picked up an onion. She had kept forgetting to eat and cooking up a pot of stew to last her the week under a food preservation charm seemed to be a good idea.

The floo flared green and she put the knife down to turn to see who it was.

“ _Hermione? It’s Harry.”_

“Hi Harry.” She gave a gesture to accept the call.

Harry’s head appeared in the floo. _“Hermione, something has happened to the Black family tree you did Teddy!”_

Hermione froze.

“What happened?” She asked.

_“There’s a whole new branch opened up on it. I think the way it’s showing them means they are all squibs until the last one, but it’s ending with a James Buchanan Barnes-Black!”_

“That’s amazing!” Hermione said.

_“Yes, Teddy spotted it this afternoon. Since you did him the family tree, the boys have started doing a project on our family trees for school, it’s Albus’ self-directed learning work for this term. He’s completely over the moon about having more family.”_

Hermione smiled, trying not to look weird, or guilty. “So, what are you going to do?”

_“I was trying to work out why the new branch opened up.”_ Harry said. _“I’m guessing that a muggleborn has just been born, or maybe done their first accidental magic or moved to Britain or something. I was thinking about how Neville’s family didn’t know he was magical until he was older. They have something like the Black family tree too.”_

Hermione nodded, Neville had kindly showed her the Longbottom Family Tree, which was a magical scroll rather than a tapestry.

_“He’s probably not old enough to go to Hogwarts yet,” Harry continued, “and his family probably don’t know they’re Blacks, so I’m going to leave a letter with Gringotts and with Professor McGonagall for when James Buchanan Barnes either opens a Gringotts account or joins Hogwarts.”_

“That sounds really sensible.” Hermione agreed. “Then if he’s still a child his parents will get it and if he’s an adult he can decide if and when he wants to make contact.”

Harry nodded. _“Teddy wanted to just send them a letter, but if they’re a muggleborn child, they’ll think it’s all a joke or something.”_

Hermione pursed her lips. “So, if he does make contact, what would you do?”

_“Start inviting them to the family get togethers.”_ Harry said. _“The Black family is really too small now. There’s really only Teddy, me and Andy now, and I guess Ginny and the boys. I think you might have been onto something about the magical legacies, I’ve got Sharptooth looking for a good Charms Master qualified solicitor to get to the bottom of it.” He shrugged. “You know the Black tapestry is now defunct considering what Sirius did to the Black magical legacy, I got Teddy a legally charmed family tree scroll and it’s the same as the one you did. Pending a proper assessment of the magical legacy aspect, I’m thinking I’m going to get a new version of the tapestry cast for Teddy, one without all of the people cursed off of it. It’s not like the Blacks are one of the 28 most inbred wizarding families in the world anymore.”_

Hermione laughed. “That’s a lovely idea.” She agreed.

_“And of course we’d want to make sure James, whoever he is, gets financially supported for his further education, and because he’s a muggleborn make sure he gets access to knowledge about the wizarding world. I kind of feel we’re responsible for him.”_ Harry said. _“Although I’m not sure what his family will think of being related to Teddy and me, what with the half-werewolf and boy-who-lived-to-kill-deatheaters things.”_

Hermione scowled. “Harry James Potter, I’m certain he’ll be absolutely glad to have you as family members, whatever you are.”

_“If you say so, Hermione.”_ Harry pushed his hair off his face. _“Anyway, I’d better go back and start drafting a letter. Teddy is not going to let me rest until I’ve done this, and he’s got Ginny on me about it too.”_

Hermione laughed. “You’ll never hear the end of it till you do.” She agreed. “Say hi to everyone for me.”

_“I will. See you soon!”_

“See you soon!”

xxxoooxxx

The soldier withdrew to a safe location to plan his next moves. He was fairly certain that without access to the homeless population, the tiny hidden encampment down by the river was good for a day or two. He had to deal with a couple of new faces who had not come across him before and decided to jump him in his sleep, but it only happened once. It only ever happened once.

He ate the remainder of the food supplies in his bag and slept for fourteen hours, safe in the knowledge that any person even remotely resembling law enforcement would be quickly spotted by the junkies who made this their home. Waking shortly after sundown, he knew it was time for a change of location and probably a change of lifestyle, but first he needed to…

What? What did he need to do? Something was pushing him from inside his head. Not like a mission, not the cold clarity of task and target. No, this was more ephemeral. He shook his head to clear it.

“Dammit!”

“Hey, mate.” One of the junkies looked blearily up at him. “I didn’ know you even talked mate!”

“Shuddup…” He stopped himself. “I gotta go.”

The junkie shrugged. “When you gotta go, you gotta go.” He said philosophically.

The soldier ignored him.

It wasn’t hard to find a house with no-one home. He broke in, carefully picking the lock on the back door and checking the house room by room to ensure it was vacant and not alarmed. Not that many houses here were alarmed. He ate the contents of the fridge and washed all his clothes in their washing machine. While his clothes spun in the tumble dryer, he finally went to the bathroom. He looked in the mirror as the shower slowly steamed it up and contemplated shaving, he was beyond stubble into a full grown beard. He looked around, but there were no razors here, whoever lived here had taken them with him. He found some trimmers and buzzed it back to stubble. That would have to do.

Cleaner, fed and well rested, he spread his weapons out across the kitchen floor in the moonlight and cleaned them one by one. He needed to be ready to act.

xxxoooxxx

Hermione did not see the man in the bomber jacket for the next two times she went to the tea shop. She was not sure how she felt about that. Her copy of the Black Family Tree had also sprouted a new branch, just as Harry had said and she really wanted to ask him if his name was James Buchanan Barnes. You couldn’t really walk up to someone you did not know though, and say ‘ _hey I may have magically divined your name, is it James Buchanan Barnes?_ ’ She contemplated going to the library to try and look him up online, but as he was homeless it seemed unlikely he would have a functional online presence and James and Barnes were pretty common names.

On Friday she packed up her papers and said goodbye to Cassie as usual, before leaving the tea shop to go home. She had a few things she needed to pick up and there were a couple of books she wanted from the mundane bookshop, as she was trying to keep at least a little abreast of mundane culture.

She was walking out of WHSmiths with her magazines when she realised that the man across the street from her had been outside Sainsburys and outside Davis Books as well. She frowned a little and deliberately did not look at him, walking away towards the butchers. In the butchers she ordered her usual weekly order, put it in her shopping bag and hung the bag over her shoulder to leave her hands free.

The man was outside the butchers when she exited. Not _exactly_ outside it but further up the street, smoking outside a coffee shop as if he had just stepped out to have a cigarette. She turned away from him and walked away, popping into the Oxfam shop for want of anywhere else to go. She perused a rotating rack of cards, selecting three birthday cards at random as she glanced through the wire rack and the shop window, out into the street. The man walked past the shop.

Hermione walked up to the counter and paid for her cards, trying to work out where she could get to in town quickly that was safe to apparate from. It was harder than it seemed. Wherever she went, she needed to get enough of a headstart on the man that he wouldn’t see her apparate or disappear into thin air in a dead end alley.

She left the shop, choosing to go in the other direction, selecting a shop at random. Outside, the man passed the window again. This was crazy. The man was obviously not a wizard, no wizards ever managed to get the clothes that right. Even muggleborns tended to have quirks, and he definitely did not have the stiffness that showed a wand-holster on his arm, thigh or in his coat. What in Merlin’s name was going on?

She spent a few minutes wandering the shop, not wanting the man to know she had seen him. Time to change shops. She left again, catching the reflection of him following her in a shop window. She needed to pick a shop. Okay, Marks and Spencers. Several floors and lots of exits. Also changing rooms. She walked in.

She was only a handful of steps into the store, when someone took her arm. She spun and opened her mouth to scream...then shut her mouth hard. It was Possibly-James. She looked up at him.

“What are you doing?” She demanded in a low voice.

Her nose pointed out to her that James no longer smelled like a homeless person, but like fabric softener and generic mens body spray.

“You’re being followed.” He said, pulling her in between two rows of men’s jackets.

“I know!” She said. “What are you doing here?”

“Rescuing you.” He said.

Hermione stared at him.

“Who are you?” She demanded.

“That’s not important.” He muttered. “The people after you, they’re…”

“Look,” Hermione snapped, “I just need to get somewhere out of sight and then I can....”

“Disappear?” Possibly-James asked her.

Hermione shut her mouth. She huffed. “Yes.” She snapped. “Disappear.”

Possibly-James looked down at her. “You won’t find anywhere you can disappear in here. It’s too loud.”

“Have you been following me?” She asked.

Possibly-James grimaced. “Once or twice.” He admitted. “I was curious.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!” Hermione spat.

“Too late.”

Possibly-James was looking over her head. Hermione turned to see the man who had been following her looking directly at her and Possibly-James and talking into a headset.

“Oh crap!”

“Yeah.” Possibly-James agreed and pulled her in the opposite direction.

Hermione glanced back at the man with the headset. “What do they want?” She asked Possibly-James.

“Me.” He said, dodging them past a woman with a pushchair loaded with bags and small children. “We gotta get out of here.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to have a gunfight in a store full of kids.”

Hermione looked up at him in shock. “Why are they following me?”

“I’m guessing because they think you know me.”

“What?” Hermione yelped.

“Sorry, doll.” He drawled, leading them to the elevator.

“Not doll,” Hermione muttered, “Hermione.”

He pushed her ahead of him into the lift.

“Where are we going?”

“Down.” Possibly-James hit the door close button, letting the doors close in the face of an elderly woman who scowled at them. “Hold this.”

He passed Hermione his bag and she almost dropped it, not expecting the weight of it.

“What the hell have you got in here?”

“Everything.” He said, pulling something small out of his pocket and fiddling with the keyhole next to the lift buttons. He made a turning motion and suddenly the lift was going down. “Service entrance.” He said.

The lift doors opened in an area which looked half warehouse, half garage. This area seemed to be a bay off of a larger area, from the sounds that echoed around the corner. Hermione could hear vehicles and trollies. Possibly-James hefted his overly heavy bag with one hand and strode out of the lift. Hermione stared as he lifted the bag as if it was a quarter of its weight.

“Keep up.” He said over his shoulder.

Hermione took the opportunity to drop her wand into her hand. “Where are we going?”

“Anywhere that’s not here.”

“Very helpful.” She muttered.

Possibly-James stopped at the end of the wall and peered around it. Hermione caught him up and waited. She could disillusion them both, she thought, but then she would have to obliviate him. Or she could apparate them both, and then have to obliviate him. If he didn’t shoot her when they landed. Possibly-James took the decision out of her hands by just walking out into the warehouse and Hermione had to trot a couple of steps to catch up with him.

There was a large loading bay entrance at the far end of the warehouse area, which Hermione realised must run all the way under the shop and under most of the shopping centre. Possibly-James strode along as if he was entirely meant to be here, Hermione struggling to keep pace with him. They had made it halfway down the loading bay, and were passing a large truck in the process of being unloaded before someone inevitably spotted them.

“Hey!”

“Oh crap!” Hermione said, glancing across at the warehouseman who was waving to get their attention.

“Just keep moving!” Possibly-James ordered her out of the side of his mouth.

She did as she was told, trotting to keep up as Possibly-James sped up. Behind them, the man was shouting at them to stop, but they were only twenty or so metres from the barrier which barred the roadway into the warehouse. Almost there.

With a screech of tires and a crash, a black four by four smashed through the barrier and barreled into the warehouse. Hermione shrieked, as Possibly-James lifted her bodily and spun them both behind a lorry. While she was still getting her feet under her, grabbing the side of the lorry to gain her balance, Possibly-James had pulled a gun that seemed impossibly huge from his holdall and had leaned around the side of the lorry.

Gun-fire, shockingly, echoingly loud, rang out and Hermione put her hands over her ears reflexively as Possibly-James stepped out of cover and fired back. She screamed as bullets slammed into his left arm which was raised into the direction of fire, but they seemed to just ping off and where they had connected she could see metal underneath. That there? That was not normal, her brain told her. James stepped back into the cover of the lorry, dropping the weapon at her feet and drawing out a second, smaller, but still large gun. He stepped back out again.

Hermione looked down at the weapon at her feet. She pulled her beaded bag out, picked it up and dropped it in, followed by her shopping bag and satchel. There was a screech of tires and she looked up in time to see the black 4x4 drive into James, except at the last minute he leapt. She watched as his left hand, the _metal fingers_ of his left hand hooked _into the metal_ of the car bonnet and he swung himself up, around and over to land crouched on the roof of the car facing forwards. The car slammed to a halt, but Possibly-James had already punched through the car roof and grabbed one of the occupants by the throat.

“We are leaving!” He shouted at her.

For a moment she thought about running, but one of the men who had tumbled out of the car was pointing a gun at her and before she could even aim her wand at the man, Possibly-James had lifted the gun in the hand that wasn’t rammed through the car roof and shot him. She pulled at the holdall at her feet, but even wired with adrenaline she wasn’t strong enough to lift it. She pulled the opening of her beaded bag open as wide as possible and rolled the holdall into it, then stuffed the bag back in her pocket.

The gunfire had stopped and James was gesturing to her. “There’s six more somewhere.” He said.

“How do you know?”

“Surveillance.” He said. “And they always have strike teams of twelve. Where’s the bag?”

Her answer was cut off by the sound of screeching tires and sirens in the distance.

“Too late.” He said.

There was a small motorcycle bay a few metres away. Possibly-James strode over, wrenched apart the links of a cycle lock securing a large motorbike, swung his leg over and with a wrench snapped the handlebars straight. Left handed he pinched away the barrel of the ignition, twisted two wires together then kicked it into power.

He threw her the helmet on the back of it. “Get on.”

Somewhere near the entryway, someone else fired a gun at them, the bullet ricocheting off the concrete near her. Hermione fumbled the helmet on and clambered on behind him.

“Hang on!”

The next few minutes were a blur of turns and swerves and skids. The bike was moving too fast for Hermione to do anything more than duck down behind Possibly-James and hang on tight. It seemed to last forever, but she knew it could only be minutes. She was pretty certain that they were still being shot at, a couple of times Possibly-James had leaned around and fired back, but he seemed more interested in getting away. Still the sound of sirens was getting louder and closer and Hermione realised that above them there was a helicopter, a _police_ helicopter.

Possibly-James suddenly swung the bike left and then right and began to slow. Hermione let go a little in order to look up. They were pulling into a semi-derelict business park. The sirens were some way off, but the police helicopter was still overhead. Possibly-James swung the bike into an empty warehouse and stopped.

He leaned round to look at her. “Get off.” He ordered her. “I’ll draw them off.”

Hermione stared at him.

“Hide, then run.” He said. “They’ll follow me.”

“This is going to seem really weird to you.” Hermione told him, looking him straight in the eyes, “but…”

He put his hand up, cutting her off, as the police sirens quite clearly turned into the road.

“They are here now.” He said, the bike still idling under them. “I can lead them off and you can run.”

“Or I can get us both out of here another way.” She said. “But it might make your arm stop working for a while.”

That got his attention. “How?”

“I can do magic,” she said, “but I’m not sure that doing magic around you is a good idea.” She told him. She gestured at his arm. “Technology doesn’t work well around magic.”

Possibly-James looked unconvinced.

“Magic?” He asked, sceptically.

She nodded. He shrugged dismissively, ripped the sleeve from his shirt and tied it roughly around his leg, crudely staunching the flow of blood from his calf.

“If we can get back to mine, I can put some dittany on it.” She said.

He ignored her. Outside cars screeched to a halt.

“Out of time.” Bomber-jacket-man said, and stood up straight, pulling a gun out of his coat and turning the bike towards the door..

“Okay.” Hermione said.

“Sorry about this.” She told his back. She grabbed him hard around the waist and grabbed his metal arm tightly around the wrist for good measure, then apparated.

xxxoooxxx

It felt like something wrenched him inwards somehow into blackness, spinning him around violently before they landed hard. Vomit rose in his gorge, but he swallowed it down hard, throwing the woman off of him. She fell backwards and landed on her sofa.

He spun towards her, pointing the gun at her, as he registered that they were apparently in a sitting room in a domestic premises.

“Where the hell are we?” He demanded.

“My house.” She replied.

“How?”

“Magic.” She told him. “I told you I could get us away with magic. I don’t just lie about that kind of thing you know.”

He frowned at her, trying to put together what had happened logically. Considering there was no other explanation for the moment, it seemed practical to accept her answer. She certainly believed it was true.

“Can I get up?” She asked.

He nodded. She pushed herself upwards to a sitting position and slowly, obviously giving him time to see what she was doing pulled out her beaded bag. She opened the little bag and tilted the opening towards the floor then reached in and felt around for a second. His holdall slid out of the tiny bag, thumped onto the floor and rolled twice before it stopped just in front of his feet. He stared down at it before looking back up at her.

“Your bag.” She said. “I don’t know what you have in there but it weighs a ton.”

The soldier huffed out something that might have been a laugh, he wasn’t sure.

“Magic?” He asked her flatly.

She nodded.

“Where is this?” He carefully looked out of a window, immediately appreciating the cover provided by the net curtains which added an additional visual shield between the open main curtains and windowpane. All he could see was a small lawn and a high edge.

“Godric's Hollow.” The woman told him. “About 15 miles from where we were before.”

He turned to look at her. “How safe is it?”

“This house is very safe.” She said. “It has a large number of magic defences.”

He walked past her and into the hallway, the house seemed quite typical for rural England. It was old, a timbered cottage, with wooden floors, slightly warped walls and visible beams in the ceilings. A crooked staircase led upwards. He ducked his head into all of the downstairs room, sitting room, kitchen, pantry, dining room, before making his way upstairs. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, a study. He walked over to the small window in the bathroom and looked out through the net curtains. Outside was a small rather untidy garden, surrounded by a hedge over 2 metres high and beyond that, fields.

He looked around the upstairs again, realising what was missing. There were no electronic devices here. No power outlets. No electric lighting. No radiators.

He could hear movement downstairs in the kitchen and retreated back down.

xxxoooxxx

Hermione sighed and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. She could hear him exploring the house. Probably checking how safe it was. After a couple of minutes he walked into the kitchen.

“How is your leg?” She asked him.

He pulled up his torn trouser leg and looked at it. “It’s stopped bleeding.” He informed her.

Hermione took her small first aid kit from the kitchen dresser and passed him the bottle of Dittany and clean gauze. “Wipe it over with this. It’ll heal most of it up.” She told him. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

He seemed somewhat at a loss for what to do. Hermione gestured at the kitchen table and walked over to put the teapot down next to the kettle. Possibly-James sat down and examined the bottle of Dittany before using it to clean the gash on his leg and several more on his arm and thigh which Hermione hadn’t even spotted. She poured boiling water into the kettle and took the tray over to the table.

“Do you have milk and sugar?” She asked.

Possibly-James was bent down on the other side of the table, but there was a pause in the movement. “I don’t know.” He said.

Hermione put the teapot down. “Okay, well, I’ll do it how I like it and you can always change it if you want it differently.”

She sat down, poured two mugs of tea with milk and leaned forward to put one in front of him. James sat back up and looked at her, his hand full of bloody gauze. Hermione pushed her abandoned breakfast plate towards him and he dropped the gauze on it then picked up his mug.

“What’s your name?” She asked him.

He froze in his seat, then picked up the cup of tea and looked at it.

“I don’t know.” He said.

She frowned, and tipped her head to look at him. “Amnesia?”

“Kinda.” He replied.

Hermione picked up her own tea to cover her awkwardness a little. “Did you have a head injury?” She asked cautiously.

He shook his head then sipped at his tea. He seemed to like it as he followed it up with a larger mouthful. They sat there for a while, just slowly drinking tea, before he spoke again.

“Hydra. The people who were after me. They...captured me, a long while ago. They…” He stared into his mug. “They reprogrammed me. Gave me this.” He gestured with his metal hand, looking up and meeting her eyes. “They experimented on me, used electroshock therapy and torture. They had a machine that wiped my memory, made me compliant, turned me into a thing, a ghost, an asset. _The_ asset. The Winter Soldier.”

He seemed to be waiting for a reaction from Hermione at that revelation, but when she didn’t seem to recognise the name or reply he continued.

“I _think_ my name is James.” He said, putting the mug down. “Probably James. James Barnes.”

“Barnes!” Hermione said excitedly. “Are you James Barnes? Were your, ah, grandparents Jonathan and Stella Barnes?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But you should know, I’m a lot older than I look. Those people, Hydra, they used to put me on ice, freeze me when I wasn’t needed for a mission. I don’t know so much about...anything now. If I’m James Barnes, then I was born in 1917.”

Hermione leaned forward in her seat. “That’s amazing!” She told him. “I’ve only met a handful of people older than you. Wizards and witches live longer than mundane humans.”

He tipped his head forward, his hair falling forward to cover his face. “I don’t know about that. What they did to me, I’m different. They call us super-soldiers, but there’s only a couple of us who the process worked on.” He looked up at her again. “There’s something about me, me and the other guy, that made the serum they shot us up with work right. I’ve been...like this since 1945.” He sighed and looked away. “What’s your name doll?” He asked her finally.

“Hermione.” She said. “Hermione Granger.”

Suddenly, he looked very tired. They drank their mugs of tea in silence.

“Would you like to shower?” Hermione offered.

James looked at her for a moment, appearing to weigh up the offer, then murmured “Thanks”.

She stood up and waited for him to stand before leading him out of the kitchen and upstairs to the bathroom.

“The shower works fine without magic.” She told him. “Just turn the taps like normal, there’s soap and shampoo in the bottles by the bath.”

He stepped into the bathroom and started to remove his clothes.

Hermione started and, blushing, she turned away. “If you leave your clothes in a pile outside the door I can clean them.” She called as she walked into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind her.

There was no reply she could hear but behind her, the shower started to run. Walking back down to the kitchen, she put the kettle back on to boil and ran some water into the laundry barrel. Upstairs, she heard the bathroom door open and close. While the water boiled, she collected the pile of clothes from outside the bathroom. It was clearly not all of what he had been wearing, just his underpants, socks, trousers and a t-shirt. The trousers were probably a dead loss, but she dumped them all in the laundry barrel, murmuring the charm to set it washing. It began to warm and slosh around in the barrel and she put the lid on to stop the whole kitchen steaming up.

By the time James came out of the shower, she had a new pot of tea and a pile of buttered toast on the table. He walked downstairs and into the kitchen wearing nothing but one of Hermione’s largest bath-towels wrapped around his hips. Hermione felt her cheeks heat in a blush. She really wasn’t used to semi-naked men wandering around her house. The metal arm was very imposing, uncovered like this and she could see there was a red star stencilled onto his upper arm. The rest of him was quite imposing also and incredibly solidly muscled.

She stared at the star on his arm, wondering how much the Black magical inheritance had impacted him. He may not have a star for a name, but it was branded on his very body.

“Wait there.” She told him, and quickly transfigured a bedsheet from her folded clean laundry into a set of pajamas and handed them to him. “That should do you until your clothes are clean.”

He stared at the pajamas for a moment, obviously surprised at the magic, then took them. He dropped the towel to the floor and Hermione turned quickly before she saw anything inappropriate, blushing furiously and taking the moment to pour the tea into the mugs. By the time she had taken her seat, he was dressed and sitting opposite her.

xxxoooxxx

The soldier dressed himself in the clothes she had magicked from the stack of clean laundry and quickly sat down. He had seen her blush too late to react and made sure to scrape the chair a little to indicate when he was seated.

She turned towards him with the two mugs of tea.

“Thanks.” He said as she put the mug of tea in front of him.

She sat down in the chair opposite her.

“The people who are after me,” he started. He spun the mug, turning the handle towards his flesh hand, before picking it up.

“What about them?” Hermione asked him.

“They will probably try to trace you in order to trace me.” He said. “We have a limited time before this house is traced back to you.”

Hermione frowned. “I don’t have much of a presence in the non-magical world.” She said. “I attended a magical school from eleven and haven’t really had anything to do with it since. This house isn’t connected to the phone or internet.”

“Gas or electric? Water?”

Hermione shook her head.

“Do you pay taxes?” James asked her.

“Yes, this is a mixed village..Magical and non-magical” She added in response to his querying look.

“Then we have a limited amount of time before they trace you.”

He stood and looked around. “Where’s my clothes?”

“In the wash.” She gestured at a wooden tub near the sink.

James frowned.

Hermione stood and walked over to the tub, opening the lid and releasing a cloud of soapy smelling steam into the kitchen. She took a stick out from where it was tucked in her belt. .

“Wingardium Leviosa.”

A bundle of dripping wet clothes rose up out of the tub.

“Scourgify!”

Water streamed out of the clothes, running back into the tub and Hermione reached out and took the bundle of clothes from the air. She tucked the stick back in her belt then used both hands to unbundle James’ clothes.

He took them from her and examined them. They were very wrinkled, but completely dry and clean smelling. He looked at the stick in her belt, it was pale wood and had been carved, but he was unable to see the detail of it without staring or getting closer. He chose to pull on his socks and his pants on over the pyjama pants and stuffed the underpants and t-shirt in a side pocket of his pants.

“Accio boots!”

James’ boots sailed into the room into Hermione’s hands. She held them out to him.

“That’s pretty useful.” He told her.

“It takes a lot of practice and study,” she told him seriously, “and most people don’t have the ability.”

“Pity.” He said, casting another glance at the stick that was back in her hand.

She tucked the stick back in her belt again.

James went back into the living room and carried his holdall back through. It clanked, his weaponry supplies refreshed by the demise of the strike team.

“If an armed strike team arrive here, can you magick us somewhere else?” He asked her.

“Of course.” She said. “Although it would probably be better to floo.” She glanced at the fireplace.

James frowned, she wasn’t making sense again. “What’s that?”

“Oh!” She said. “Sorry, just a different kind of magical transport.”

“Fine.” He opened his bag and started to check over his kit. “You better pack a bag.” He told her without looking up. “We’re probably going to have to leave.”

“Already done.” She said,

He looked up at her and she picked up the small beaded bag from the kitchen counter which had magically held his holdall earlier.

“It’s a lot bigger inside than it looks.” She told him earnestly, putting it back down on the counter.

As she put it down he spotted four more sticks, carved and similar in size and shape to her stick at least. Two were almost black, straight with simple shaping at one end, as if turned on a lathe. Another was an amber tone and curved and the final one was pale like hers but with practically no decoration. He walked over and picked one of the black ones up.

“What are these?”

As he turned towards her, waving the stick towards her to get her attention, a fountain of silver sparks sprayed from the end.

xxxoooxxx

“What are these?” James picked up a random Black wand from the counter and waved it. A fountain of silver sparks sprayed from the end. He dropped it like it was on fire, leaping backwards away from it.

Hermione waited a second for him to calm a little, then stepped forward.

“It’s a wand.” She picked it up from the floor. “A magic wand.”

“Why did it do that?” He demanded in a low voice, still glaring at the wand.

“Because you are apparently able to use magic and it is a magically compatible wand.” Hermione flipped the wand in her hand and held it out to him. He stared at it as if it would burn him.

“Oh, for heaven's sake!” Hermione pulled out her own wand. “Lumos!” She cast left-handed.

He looked up at the glowing tip of her wand. She touched the tip to her nose for a second.

“It won’t hurt you.” She said.

He took the proffered wand.

“Wave it again.” She ordered him.

He gave her a wary look, but waved it and this time kept hold of it as the sparks shot out of the end.

“Okay, now try this one.” She handed him one of the other Black wands.

Nothing happened with the second or third wand, but the fourth wand, the other ebony wand gave a larger spray of sparks.

“Well,” Hermione said firmly, “I think that’s your wand now.”

James frowned at it. “What do I do with it?”

Hermione shrugged. “You learn magic, of course.”

He stared at her, through his hair.

“It’s a useful skill.” She said.

“And you’ll just teach it to me.” He said.

She shrugged again. “I can teach you some.” She said.

He frowned. “Why aren’t you scared of me?” He asked suddenly, and with a quick movement there was a knife in his hand.

“Expelliarmus!” Hermione caught the knife by its hilt.

In the moment it had taken her to catch it, there was another knife in his hand. Hermione sighed, turned the knife and held it out to him. He took it cautiously.

“I’m a witch.” She told him, turning her back on him and walking back across the kitchen to put the kettle on again. “And I fought in a war, a wizarding war, when I was still a child. You are certainly not the most scary opponent I have ever faced.” She looked back at him. “Sit down.”

She hadn’t been entirely sure whether he would, but the knives both disappeared and he sat down at the table.

“There was a wizard called Voldemort, about forty years ago, who thought that wizards should rule the world. Thought that mundane people were less than wizards, thought that mundane born wizards should be controlled or killed. A lot like Hitler really.” She said, staring out of the kitchen window. “He wasn’t the first wizard to think this, but he was motivated and clever and he organised his followers, they called themselves Deatheaters, to do horrible crimes against mundanes and people who opposed him. He was almost completely defeated once, but he managed to survive and while I was still at school he came back. It’s complicated, but my best friend was his main target for a long while and we had to fight, had to hide, had to survive on the run, fight in battles…” Hermione ran out of breath and stopped. She poured boiling water into the teapot. “This house has goblin war-wards.” She turned back to him. “That means it’s more secure than an army base. It means that if you wanted to hurt me with your knife, it would probably kill you unless I told it not to.” She assembled the rest of the tea things on the table before she sat down. “I’ve killed people in battles with my magic, I could kill you with a word.” She pressed her lips together.

James sat there frowning at her. She ignored his expression and poured them both mugs of tea.

“Unless Hydra are magical,” Hermione said leaning forward and making eye contact, “and I strongly suspect they are not, then you could disappear into the British magical world and never be seen again. There’s an entire separate magical community hidden from the mundane normal population. I can teach you, and I have friends who can teach you, and you can just be an American cousin who was homeschooled. The fact that you don’t know much about the modern world just makes it more believable.”

The soldier froze. This had not even occurred to him. Although the thought of a completely separate magical community living invisibly alongside the mundane one had been unknown to him.

“If you are willing, I can speak to your magical family members.”

He stared at her in shock.

“Family members?”

“Oh dear.” She frowned slightly. “This wasn’t how I wanted to tell you this. Wait there.”

She dashed into her study and pulled out the book on genealogy and her copy of the Black Family Tree. As soon as she rolled it out on the kitchen table, she could see a problem looming.

“This is a magical family tree.” She told him as she smoothed it out, using the sugar bowl and mugs to hold it down. “And as you can see, it’s already added you to the family.” She pointed to a brand new branch which culminated in James Buchanan Barnes-Black. “I’m assuming that the full name you thought was yours was James Buchanan Barnes.”

James nodded and leaned over the family tree.

“Look, I’m writing a book. It’s a book for mundane born wizards, to explain about wizarding society. _Accio manuscript!”_ She caught the manuscript out of the air. “Have a look at this.” She told him. “It’s not finished, but it’ll give you an idea about what magical society is like.”

“We don’t have time for that.” He told her, pushing the book away. “There will be a Hydra Strike Team coming after me, and probably you too now.”

Hermione sighed. “The wards will kill them.”

“Will the wards stop bullets?” He demanded, getting up in her face.

Hermione paused, but didn’t back down. “I don’t know.”

“Then we have to get out of here.” He told her. “Because they can sit back out of range, spray your house with high calibre bullets and not even bat an eyelid.”

“Okay.” She agreed, now was not the time to be testing the wards against mundane weaponry. “I’ll…”

There was a crash and a cracking sound from the back garden.

“Too late!” She said.

“What was that?” James demanded.

“Someone being knocked unconscious and translocated twenty miles away.” Hermione said.

There was another crash and crack.

“How far out do the defences go?” James asked her.

“Just the boundaries of the property.” She said.

There were two more crash/cracks then silence.

“They won’t keep coming like this.” James said.

There was a splintering noise. Hermione looked around, but James grabbed her by the arm.

“That’s gunfire.” He grabbed the scroll and her beaded bag with his free hand and stuffed it in a pocket. “Do your thing again!” He grabbed his holdall.

Another bullet slammed through the kitchen wall and this time smashed into Hermione’s welsh dresser shattering a plate. Hermione pulled him towards the fireplace then turned to him. She opened her locket and pulled out a small piece of paper, holding it up to him.

_The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is 12 Grimmauld Place._

“I’m going to pull us through. Trust me.” She grabbed a handful of floo powder and threw it in the fireplace. “Kitchen, 12 Grimmauld Place!” She shouted. “Hold on tight!”

She grabbed hold of him with both hands and pulled him towards the fireplace. For a moment he resisted.

“Trust me!” She pleaded, and finally she felt him relax and allow her to pull him into the floo.

xxxoooxxx

James felt them spinning through the magical transportation device. In seconds, they were falling out into a large, old fashioned kitchen. Somewhere in the travel he had inhaled something that tasted like soot and he coughed as he tried to untangle himself from their sprawl on the kitchen floor.

“Miss Hermione is bringing friend?”

James rolled up to his knees and aimed his gun at the small ugly creature, which was standing a metre or so away, watching them.

Hermione pushed herself to sitting. “Hello Rilly.”

She reached out and pushed James’ gun down. James pulled the gun away from her hand, but put it away, she appeared to know the creature.

“James, this is Rilly, she’s a house-elf. She and Tansy manage the house for my friend Harry.”

“Welcome to House of Black, James.” Rilly said. Her voice was high and piping.

James looked at Hermione in silent query, she had mentioned the House of Black earlier, had suggested it was his family. She nodded.

“Is Miss Hermione telling Master Harry she is here?”

James waited, watching Hermione. He was not sure whether he wanted to meet these people or not. Hermione looked at him for a moment before turning back to the little creature.

“We need a few hours first Rilly.” She said. “I’ll tell Harry soon.”

The creature gave her a skeptical look, wringing its hands in the front of it’s apron before giving a decisive little nod.

“I let you have till tea time.” It said.

“Thanks.” Hermione said.

The little creature trotted over to the cooker. “I make you hot chocolate and sandwiches.” It said over its shoulder. “You go wash up.”

Hermione looked at James. “It’s usually best to just do what she tells you.”

James was skeptical, but gave a shrug. “Is this place safe?”

Hermione grinned. “This place is the safest.” She said confidently. “It’s so protected and hidden with magic, it basically doesn’t exist unless you know about it. You can’t even _see_ it if you don’t know about it.”

Another one of the little creatures walked into the kitchen. “Follow Tansy.” She ordered him. “I take you to wash face and hands.”

He glanced at Hermione and she gave him a little shooing gesture.

The second small creature took him to a small bathroom. The basin was already full of hot water and the small creature waited with a towel while he washed the soot from his face and hands. He dried himself on the towel she offered him then allowed himself to be led back to the kitchen where Hermione waited at the kitchen table. He wondered if all magical people lived in their kitchens.

“Have you got my bag?” She asked him.

James silently took the bag and crumpled scroll from the side pocket of his pants and handed them to her. She began to flatten out the scroll on the kitchen table. The little creature Rilly came over and clucked at them disapprovingly as she put a pot of coffee and a plate of sandwiches on the table.

Hermione pointed to the lowest end of the family tree. “These ones are alive,” she tapped the names of Harry Potter-Black, Andromeda Black-Tonks and Edward Remus Lupin-Black. “But Teddy is only a child. Most of the rest were on one or other side of the wizarding war I told you about and are dead.” She pointed at Narcissa and the Malfoy’s. “These ones were on the other side for most of the wizard war and are...problematic.” She said diplomatically.

James gave her a long look.

Hermione shrugged, then tapped Harry again. “Harry’s parents were killed in the first wizarding war against Voldemort. Sirius was Harry’s godfather and left everything to Harry. Harry is Teddy’s godfather. Teddy’s parents were killed in the second wizarding war against Voldemort. Andy lost her daughter, her sisters, her cousins, everyone. Harry and Andy fought in the war, Andy fought in both wars. Harry is probably the most dangerous wizard in Britain if he wanted to be. They would be really happy if you wanted to be part of their family.”

She rolled up the family tree again and gave it to him.

xxxoooxxx

Hermione looked washed out and he realised that the adrenaline that had been keeping her going till this point had finally run out. The little creature Rilly pushed a plate of sandwiches and cake, a cup of tea and a small bottle in front of the woman. To James' surprise, Hermione picked up the bottle and drank it as soon as her eyes had focussed on it.

“What’s that?” He asked.

“Dreamless sleep.” Hermione murmured. “I’ll probably fall asleep as soon as I’ve eaten.”

She methodically worked her way through the food and drink, in a way that was eerily familiar. His mind threw up the image of a mixed group of men, exhausted and filthy, methodically eating from tins. James ate the food that Rilly put in front of him and by the time he had finished, Hermione’s head had dropped onto her arms and she was dozing.

Rilly gestured and the plates all floated away from the table. She looked up at James.

“You pick up Miss Hermione.” She ordered him, in a tone like a little parade sergeant.

James stood and carefully slipped his arms underneath Hermione. Rilly nodded approvingly and trotted out of the kitchen, beckoning him after her.

The house was much bigger than Hermione’s little cottage. He caught glimpses of more than one sitting room as they walked down the hallway and they ascended three floors until Rilly pointed at a door, which opened ahead of her. James followed Rilly into an old fashioned bedroom with a huge wooden framed bed, enormous wardrobe and dresser, all decorated in shades of pale blue and beech.

Rilly snapped her fingers and Hermione’s shoes disappeared and reappeared on the floor, and the bedclothes folded back all on their own. Rilly gestured peremptorily at him to lay Hermione down. He did as indicated and the covers moved themselves up over her. Rilly gestured at the curtains and they closed themselves, shutting out the last of the daylight. James realised it was much later than he had thought.

“Miss Hermione just need few hours of good sleep.” Rilly told him. “Follow me.”

She led him to the room next door, smaller and very green, with accents of silver and a lot of dark wooden furniture. It was immaculately clean and Rilly pushed him towards the bed, her tiny hands on his calf.

“This Master Regulus old room. You stay here. Rilly think Master Regulus would like Master James.” She snapped her fingers and his holdall appeared on the floor. “Master James need anything, you just call Rilly. I’ll hear you. Bathroom is door at end of landing.” She bustled out and the door closed behind her.

He walked over, opened it and peered out. Rilly was about to descend the stairs, but looked up at him.

“You safe here.” She told him. “Grimmauld Place is safest place now. And Rilly and Tansy fought in Battle of Hogwarts! I killed many dark wizards and werewolves. Now, you sleep!” She ordered him.

James pulled the door to. He arranged a few weapons in appropriate places, opened the door a crack for line of sight, then lay down on top of the bedclothes and slept.

xxxoooxxx

Hermione awoke in the blue guest bedroom. She didn’t remember going to sleep there, but expected that Rilly or Tansy had put her to bed. She got up and looked at the dresser. One of the house elves had left a stack of clean clothes, a dressing gown and a towel in a neat pile.

She hung the dressing gown on the back of the door and took the clean clothes to the bathroom at the end of the landing. As she passed Regulus room, the door was slightly open and James was laying on the bed, asleep. Tansy appeared silently in front of her and put her finger to her lips. Hermione passed on to the bathroom.

Freshly washed and dressed, she crept down the stairs to the kitchen. Rilly was cooking bacon and eggs at the stove, and a pot of tea, a rack of toast, butter and jam was already waiting on the table. Hermione sat herself down and helped herself to tea.

“Master James is very tired.” Rilly said. “Tansy say he need more sleep.”

“Yesterday was very trying.” Hermione told her. “There was fighting and guns.”

Rilly frowned. “Yes. Rilly see Master James’ guns.” The house elf obviously did not approve.

Hermione buttered a slice of toast.

“You will be talking to Master Harry today?” Rilly asked her.

Hermione nodded. “Yes,” she said, “there’s some stuff we need to discuss.”

Rilly nodded, then looked up at the ceiling. “Master James awake.” She informed Hermione.

James walked into the room a few moments later, looking rumpled, in a pair of combat trousers and a tank-top. Rilly put two plates of fried breakfast on the table and pointed at the considerably larger one.

“Master James sit here.” She ordered him.

He did as he was told.

“Are you okay?” Hermione asked him. “Did you sleep okay?”

He nodded then started eating. Hermione looked at him for a moment, something was tickling her memory.

“Oh!” She said suddenly.

He looked up.

“The star!” She said. “On your arm.”

The floo flared green. James was out of his seat in seconds, dropping the cutlery, a knife appearing in his hand.

“It’s okay.” Hermione said. “It’s the floo. Magical communication device.”

Harry’s voice came through the floo, sounding excited. _“Hermione? Are you there?”_

James held up his hand to Hermione and moved to stand next to the chimney breast. Once he was out of the line of sight, Hermione replied.

“Hi Harry.”

Harry’s head appeared in the floo. _“Hermione, are you okay? We were worried!”_

Hermione froze.

“What happened?” She asked, not answering the question.

_“I tried to call you on the floo, but I couldn’t get it to connect.”_

“Oh damn!” Hermione said.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see James was pressing back against the wall.

_“I was beginning to worry, but Nilla said Rilly had messaged to say you were at Grimmauld place with a friend.”_

Hermione nodded, forcing herself not to look at James. “Things...got a bit complicated.”

_“Define complicated.”_ Harry told her. _“I just apparated across to your house and it’s half burned out.”_

Hermione sat down heavily at the table.

“I…” She paused, swallowed and started again. “My friend, James, he’s on the run from some people.”

_“Don’t go anywhere.”_ Harry ordered her. _“I’m coming over.”_

Harry disconnected the Floo and Hermione turned to James.

“Hell!.” He muttered.

“Well, I guess you’ll get to meet your family now.” Hermione told him. “Don’t worry. Once we’ve officially confirmed your identity…”

“Hah!” Rilly was standing by the sink with her little hands on her hips. “Rilly doesn’t need complicated magic to know one of her family! Rilly already welcome you to House of Black!” She gestured and another place setting for breakfast floated over to the table. “You sit down and eat!”

James sat down, not taking his eyes off the floo, but began to eat. Thirty seconds later, the floo flared again and Harry stepped out.

He stopped and stared at James, then looked to Hermione, before turning back to James. “Hi,” he said, “I’m Harry.”

James put his cutlery down. “James.” He said. “James Barnes.”

Harry’s eyes widened and he looked back to Hermione.

“Well,” she replied to his unspoken question, “I haven’t actually done the charm yet, but I’m pretty certain he is James Buchanan Barnes-Black.”

“Wow.” Harry said. “Erm, pleased to meet you. I’m Harry Potter, or I guess Harry Potter-Black in this case.” He let Rilly push him over to the table and sat down as a cup of tea poured itself in front of him.

James nodded awkwardly.

Hermione took a sip of tea before she spoke. “My cottage?” She asked in a small voice, not really wanting the answer.

“It’s a mess.” Harry said flatly. “I’m not sure what happened to it.”

“The strike team probably tried to burn us out of there.” James said.

Harry stopped. “Okay, there’s a lot here that I don’t know about isn’t there?”

Hermione took a deep breath to steady herself. She had really liked her cottage. “James is on the run from an organisation that took him prisoner during World War 2, experimented on him and brainwashed him.”

Harry nodded and looked at James.

“Since 1945 I’ve been a brainwashed cyborg assassin for Hydra, they mostly kept me frozen, woke me up and reprogrammed me when they needed someone killed.” James said flatly. “I broke the programming and escaped eleven months ago. I’ve been travelling around, slowly getting my memory back and trying not to get caught by Hydra again.”

Harry nodded. “Who are Hydra?” He asked.

“Secret organisation who want to take over the world.” James said with a shrug.

“Seems there’s a few of those.” Harry said.

James looked at the young man. “You don’t want me round.” He said. “I have a whole boatload of trouble on my tail.”

Harry started to laugh. James just stared at him as if he was mad. Hermione began to chuckle.

“Welcome to the House of Black.” Harry said when he managed to stop laughing. “You’ll fit right in.”


End file.
